


The Woman Who Fell From the Sky

by Merlin Missy (mtgat)



Category: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe
Genre: Culture Shock, Didn't Know They Were Dating, F/M, First Meetings, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 10:15:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11918751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mtgat/pseuds/Merlin%20Missy
Summary: Astronaut Marlena Glenn crash-landed on an alien planet and did not expect the first person she'd meet would be a handsome prince.





	The Woman Who Fell From the Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DesertVixen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertVixen/gifts).



> Written as a treat for DesertVixen in RarePairs 2017

They remembered things differently, or perhaps they chose to remember different things. Marlena remembered being chosen for the Valiant probe mission, the first manned mission past Mars. She remembered the annoying joke headlines about "First Womaned Mission" in the newspapers when NASA announced she'd be flying the _Rainbow Warrior_ solo. She remembered how proud her family had been, how each one had felt as she'd hugged her parents and her brother for the last time. She'd followed her father into the Air Force as soon as she'd been old enough to enter the Academy, and the pride on his face as he wished her luck on her mission would always stay with her.

She remembered the hazy light that engulfed her ship as she neared the asteroid belt, and the sudden rush of asteroids, far denser than she'd expected from all her mission briefings. As she'd flown her poor ship through the tight web, lectures from her astrophysics classes came back to her, droning in the back of her mind as she watched warning lights flash. The _Warrior_ was dying.

She remembered the reading on her scanner, the small planet where no planet should have been, not past Mars and before Jupiter. She'd spent three entire seconds deciding if she chose to believe her studies or the evidence of her own eyes. Adelaide Glenn's little girl had always gone the practical route.

Marlena remembered clearly the feel of the stick on her hand as she coaxed it closer to the planet, remembered breathing through her nose as she performed her pre-landing checks, knowing the chance the planet had oxygen was so low it may as well also have unicorns. She remembered the engines losing control and the scream of metal as she crashed. She remembered seeing daylight through the crack in her hull, and deciding if she was about to die, she wanted to die standing on a new planet.

She didn't remember passing out.

Randor remembered finding her without her helmet, fainted on the ground, although sometimes he swore he remembered he and Duncan had found her still cocooned in her ship. He remembered thinking he'd just seen an angel plummeting out of the sky, clad in strange silver armor. He remembered seeing the most beautiful woman he'd ever encountered, and the sharp sorrow in his heart when he believed she was dead. He remembered his delight when she'd come to, and the flip of his heart when she'd started speaking to him, not afraid, not demurring to the young king. He remembered being utterly taken with her at once.

Randor was a romantic old silly.

Her first few days on Eternia passed in a blur of excited discovery. Now, tucked away with Adam's baby clothes and the only photograph she had of Adora, she kept the tattered old notebook she'd carried everywhere with her back then, making notes on this strange culture. Her artistic skills weren't the best, and she'd abandoned drawing Eternian trees and animals for the biologists back home after a few hasty sketches. She turned to anthropology instead, writing what in hindsight read like the most naive yet patronizing notes about the social strata of Eternian society, their primitive belief in magic, and their outdated monarchy.

"We don't have kings and queens where I come from," she told an astonished Randor over dinner. "Not in America."

"Is America part of Earth?"

"Of course." America was Earth for her. She knew other countries existed side by side with hers, and she had been stationed overseas. She'd even visited England once, and they had kings and queens there. She'd never thought more about it. Sitting here at dinner, eating a meal she didn't recognize cooked over a stove powered by an energy source she'd never heard of, surrounded by flying guardsmen and purple trees, Marlena faced the sudden, uncomfortable understanding she was further from home than she'd ever traveled. Earth was a distant blue planet she might never see again.

"Are you all right?" Randor stood from his seat and came to her side. "Is it the dizziness? I can summon the doctor."

"I'm fine." Eternia's atmosphere was close enough to Earth's to let her breathe and different enough to leave her gasping as she acclimatized. The language they spoke was close enough to English for her to understand and strange enough to leave her blinking in confusion as they talked past each other. "A walk might clear my head."

The vertigo and fear passed. She would return home, filled with tales about her incredible journey. She must hold faith. She knew who she was and where she belonged.

Marlena had never doubted her own place in the universe until she walked through an enchanted forest beside a handsome young king as he patiently named animals and explained magic to her.

"There has to be an explanation," she said, for the millionth time, as they watched rocks orbit one another, swooping and diving in patterns like eagles.

"Yes. It's magic. Don't they have magic back on your Earth?" He didn't seem astonished, merely rather sad for her.

She waved her hand absently. "David Copperfield stuff." This place was mad. Randor said there were unicorns, although only a few remained out of the great herds that once roamed the land, and elsewhere dragons lived, although they weren't seen around these parts much since the end of the war.

Marlena understood torque and yaw and following orders. She was a pilot, an astronaut, the best and brightest Earth had to offer. She knew the engineering that had gone into her beloved ship, and the science that went into her mission, and nothing of unicorns. And she felt the lesser for that.

She watched the floating rocks for a moment, remembering the lectures where she'd studied the spin of planets in their orbits, equations she'd memorized as Copernicus and Newton ached to describe rocks dancing in the heavens. She had believed magic and physics to be enemies, diametric opposites of savage ignorance against serene logic. It seemed instead the two were lovers, bending ever towards each other.

"Tell me about the war with the dragons."

"It was a long time ago. Are you sure you're interested?"

She took his hand. "Positive."

She devoured Eternian history next, listening raptly as Randor told her tales of his ancestors, and the early battles with the Horde, though like the dragons, they'd not been seen in some time.

"It seems I've arrived at a good time. Everything is peaceful here."

"Not always, but yes. Are there many wars on your Earth?"

"Enough."

When Randor was occupied with matters of state, she found her feet returning to the workshop where Randor's friend Duncan tinkered with machines beyond Earth technology. "I've replaced your engine," he told her today with a happy smile. "I wasn't sure the power converter would work between our source and yours, and it seemed easier to exchange the whole part."

Marlena walked around her ship, noting the seamless interface he'd made between his own work and the existing ship. "'Thank you' seems so inadequate."

"It's no problem at all, miss." He made the slight deferential bow to her that he did to Randor when he spoke to his king.

"Duncan, you can call me Marlena."

"Of course, Miss Marlena."

"Where I come from, we're all equals."

"You're very far from home, miss."

She turned and rested against her ship. "Don't I know it." She stroked the hull. "When do you think she'll be ready to fly?"

"Fly? She's ready now." Duncan turned back to the ship, forgetting whatever distance he'd imagined between them as he was distracted by the mechanical workings of her spaceship. "She can fly when you like if you want to take her out. It's keeping her spaceworthy that will be tricky. I've got some ideas about an energy barrier."

"Good Pittsburg steel and silica plates got me here. They'll do."

"While that may be," Duncan said diplomatically, "you've got a better chance of getting home safely with a little Eternian ingenuity thrown in."

"You're going home?"

Marlena and Duncan turned. Randor had finished with his work and he always knew where to find her. He'd known for weeks Duncan was repairing her ship. Today his eyes were sad.

She said in a bright voice, "Duncan replaced my engine. She's ready to fly."

Duncan cleared his throat. "Sire, I've got guard duties now. If you'll excuse me." He left them alone, Randor watching her, Marlena touching her ship.

"Your ship is ready," Randor said, twisting the words in his mouth unhappily. "I thought you'd stay for some time. We've got the harvest festival coming soon. You could write about it in your book. You like doing that."

"My ship can fly. She's not ready for vacuum yet." She pattered her fingers against the ship's hull. "The bigger question is, where do I go? I'm not sure where we are. Those star charts you showed me aren't any help. I don't recognize any of the constellations in the sky at night, and I can't figure out where Eternia is in relation to Earth's solar system." The bright haze brought her here, perhaps a wormhole, perhaps something much stranger.

Randor listened to her, nodding. "There are others who might have more insight to your questions. There's a legend of a magical castle hidden deep in the wastelands. The keeper of the castle may have the information you need. We could go on a quest to find the castle together."

The logical part of her mind made a final stand. "Magic castles! Quests! Do you have any idea how this all sounds? This planet doesn't make sense! I can accept the atmosphere is Earth-like." She gestured at him. "But you're human! You act like a medieval king, and you speak English, and you've fought dragons!" She shook her head to clear the nonsense away. "This has to be a hallucination. I'm still in my ship, dying of oxygen starvation in the asteroid belt, and I'm dreaming of a handsome prince."

At 'handsome' his face tilted into a smile. "King, actually, but I'll take the compliment. I've never fought a dragon, personally." To her surprise, he took her hand and held it between his own. "You think this is a dream?"

"It's the only rational explanation."

He kissed her. The kiss was startlingly gentle, a press of his lips against hers, enough to feel the hiss of his breath. "Not everything is rational, my dear. Perhaps I'm dreaming of a beautiful woman who fell from the stars."

Marlena was not turned by a simple compliment. Nevertheless she kissed him back, a little deeper. If this was a dream, especially her last dream before dying, it was long past time for her to indulge herself.

"Stay until the harvest festival." He touched their noses together, his eyes a little wide, a little frightened of her answer, and desperately sweet. "Stay forever."

"I'll stay until the harvest festival," she said, and rested against the ship as his arms went around her.

The dream, if dream it was, only improved as the days went by. Randor dropped any last pretence that he was not courting her. Marlena dropped one by one her hopes of returning home. Earth was far, so far she couldn't find it in the night sky, and he was near. She missed her family, but she'd expected to miss them for the months-long duration of her solo mission, and they were an absent ache, the way she missed her grandparents after their deaths. Eternia, in all its impossible whimsy, filled her days with wonder, and her nights were crowded with other, pleasant discoveries.

Randor was very human. This only added to the 'dream' theory, but if so, it was a beautiful dream she intended to spend the last minutes of her life enjoying, and if not, she would gladly spend the long years of her life enjoying it instead.

He proposed marriage at the end of the harvest festival, while they sat together on a blanket away from others, only the discreet distance of the guards as their chaperone. She considered before answering, though not for overlong. They were rocks floating in space, dancing to equations written where no one could see. Under the unfamiliar stars, she said yes, and she whispered in his ear that they could celebrate back at the palace where they could be alone.

Duncan put the ship into the palace museum.

Everyone bought the story that Earth women were only pregnant for eight months. Besides, twins were often early, even on Eternia.

The End


End file.
